


mortality

by prettiestsailor



Series: lessons of elysium [3]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Angst, But you can pry reflective philosophical Theseus from my cold dead hands, Death, I mean yes he's canonically stupid, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Reflections on Mortality, You don't need to have read the rest of the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettiestsailor/pseuds/prettiestsailor
Summary: Theseus knows that he is lucky to be in Elysium, and even luckier to be able to share it with Asterius. He considers the alternatives.
Relationships: Asterius | The Minotaur/Theseus (Hades Video Game)
Series: lessons of elysium [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2197074
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	mortality

Theseus was not much of a thinking man—he acted mostly by feeling; by instinct. Even so, the afterlife gave him infinite time to reflect on his situation, as well as that of Asterius. He lay in thought, one day or night, Asterius soundly asleep beside him. Though the shutters of their chamber windows were closed, creating an artificial darkness, Theseus could see Asterius’s chest rise and fall—breathing as a shade was optional, but most did so out of habit, anyway.

His mind was filled with thoughts of their union, of the way they had come together in death. He thought of the way that Asterius had come into his own—from the beaten, uncertain soul Theseus met in life to the confident, thoughtful warrior who lay with him now. And he considered that all of this was contingent on the existence of the Underworld, and on the time that Elysium had given them.

But what if there had been no afterlife? Was that even possible? Of course, in life, Theseus had been guided and advised by the gods—if less so than other heroes. He had tangible proof of their existence, and it would follow, then, that the stories of the Underworld were true, also. But what if those were just tales the gods spun to appease the mortals? A rationalisation of the absurd, an incentive to keep living and fighting even when things were bleak?

In that case, death would be nothingness—the same ineffable blankness that comes before birth. Theseus’s life would have been a spark, a temporary reprieve from darkness. And, he thought, maybe that would not bother him so much. After all, though his life had been marked by a hollowness, an emptiness that could only be filled in Elysium, he had achieved things and seen things and done things that most people never would. Even his end at the hands of Lycomedes would not have been so tragic, knowing that he had been so fulfilled and so glorious before that point.

No, it was not the idea of his own final death that bothered him, but of Asterius’s. Next to him, Asterius was unmistakably peaceful and content in a way life had never allowed him to be. Theseus thought of his pain, and imagined a world where there was nothing afterwards. That instead of a light in the dark, Asterius’s life had been an instant of pain amid an eternity of numbness. Theseus shuddered. He thought of the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth, where he had slain Asterius. The ornate, formidable Labyrinth, where his footsteps echoed as he walked along cold marble floors, bathed in darkness. He wondered, what if that were all there had been to Asterius’s life? Asterius spoke about it sometimes, frankly and plainly—about the hunger that overwhelmed him; the heaviness that suffocated him; the sweltering heat he felt in his cold, forbidding dungeon. A life he hated, but never resented—he was a monster, so they said. It had been his destiny. That was what Minos had wanted.

Asterius had described Theseus’s arrival, the determined glint in his eye like nothing he had seen before, and the way this plunged him into the inevitable. Asterius had put up as good a fight as ever, for that was his purpose, but, in the end, he had succumbed, gladly—thankfully. Death had been a mercy. Theseus blinked in the dark as he thought of this. Would death have felt like a mercy even if it had been final? Were there those for whom life is so torturous and so cruel that the abyss was a welcoming embrace?

In Elysium, it had been Theseus’s pleasure to give Asterius the afterlife he deserved—or as close as he could come to that—but it had also felt like a duty. This was the recompense he could offer for what Asterius had suffered in life. At times, like when Asterius basked in the way the crowds sung his name, or when he hinted at a smile as he sat in the idyllic glades of Elysium, Theseus felt—yes, if he can keep experiencing this, then it will one day be enough to outweigh the pain he suffered in life. Asterius did not see it this way, always grateful and without complaint in a way that made Theseus’s heart ache, wishing that he knew how much  _ more  _ he deserved. But it made him happy, and that was not for Theseus to question.

Still, he wondered what he would have felt if he had never had that chance—if he had never been able to bring Asterius to Elysium with him. What if Elysium had existed but only one of them were permitted to be there? Well, that was easy. Theseus would have sacrificed his place there for Asterius in an instant. Wandering the shores of Erebus forever would have felt like a small price to pay to give Asterius the glory he had earned. More difficult to fathom was what he would have done if such a petition had not been allowed at all. Then, he would have been in paradise, but it might as well have been Tartarus. Would he visit Asterius in Erebus, if they were bound to keep their places? Would Asterius have let him?

Even worse, what if the gods had been as cruel as Minos, and had deemed Asterius a monster, unworthy of an afterlife? What if he had been denied even entry to Erebus, and cast aside like an animal? That would have been the ultimate cruelty. Theseus had never understood how those around him had so little regard for Asterius—he was more than his lineage, and certainly more than the role Minos had imposed on him. But the gods were not always paragons of justice—indeed, Asterius’s existence was the result of Poseidon’s vengeance. They could, in that same vein, have decided that he was not worthy of claiming his humanity.

Theseus felt cold. He reached out and brushed Asterius’s hand with the back of his own, allowing himself to feel small as he was overwhelmed by the sense that all of these questions, all of these possibilities, were much bigger than himself. And if thinking about it hurt him so much, the pain that Asterius had to contend with, even now, must have been much greater than he had imagined.

There was some comfort in the fact that they were in Elysium, together, and that this eternity was certain and immutable, but this did not bring Theseus much solace. After all, it was by chance that the world was this way—a stroke of luck. He could, just as easily, have been a soul lost to oblivion, and Asterius the same. And then, there would have been no reconciliation, no comfort, in that inescapable cloak of nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/prettiestsailor) if you like!


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